First long-list announced for book awards

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By Hillel ItalieAssociated Press • Monday September 16, 2013 10:37 AM

Kate DiCamillo and David Levithan were among the 10 authors who made the first-ever long-list of
finalists for the National Book Awards, part of a new nominating process that prize organizers hope
will lead to increased attention and sales.

DiCamillo and Levithan were nominees in the Young People's Literature category, announced
today by the National Book Foundation, which presents the awards. Over the next three days, 10
finalists will be announced for each of the remaining three competitive categories - poetry,
nonfiction and fiction. On Oct. 16, the nominees will be narrowed to five for each category. The
winners, each of whom receive $10,000, will be revealed at a Nov. 20 dinner and ceremony in New
York City.

Earlier this month, the book foundation announced that E.L. Doctorow and Maya Angelou would
receive honorary awards.

Publishers, some of whom sit on the book foundation's board and contribute thousands of
dollars for tables at the ceremony, have worried in recent years that judges - especially fiction
judges - have been overlooking such high-profile books as Jonathan Franzen's
Freedom in favor of more obscure releases. Anxious for the National Book Awards to match,
or least approach, the commercial power of Britain's Man Booker Prize, the board added long-lists
and expanded the pool of judges. The awards had long been voted on by panels of fellow writers, but
judges this year also come from the bookselling, journalism and library communities.

The young people's category features several nominees who have won prizes before, including
three former National Book Award nominees and two winners of the Newbery Medal. One finalist, Gene
Luen Yang's
Boxers & Saints, is a two-volume graphic novel. In 2006, his
American Born Chinese became the first graphic novel to receive a National Book Award
nomination.

DiCamillo, best known for her Newbery-winning
The Tale of Despereaux, was nominated for
Flora & Ulysses. Kadohata, a Newbery winner for
Kira-Kira, was cited for
The Thing About Luck. Levithan, a popular author and a vice president and editorial
director at Scholastic Inc., was a finalist for
Two Boys Kissing.